


Fading.

by IceBreeze



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Established Relationship, F/F, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Post-Canon, Renison Week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-16
Updated: 2016-11-16
Packaged: 2018-08-29 05:56:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8477857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IceBreeze/pseuds/IceBreeze
Summary: And so the world faded to black.





	

**Author's Note:**

> For Renisonweek Day 3: Black and White. So I'm pretty happy with this despite it being vague af, but it's basically an AU where you lose your ability to see colour after you die. Becoming a ghost is actually reasonably rare, but there are still quite alot of them namely for the fact that, once you become a ghost you're stuck there. Dead people are pretty unreliable narrators, as they begin to fade as time passes.
> 
> I hope you enjoy reading it as much I did writing it (though the ship was more off screen than I intended).

To Allison, the world was painted black and white. Colour didn’t exist to her anymore, not really- she knew it was supposed to be there, but it was nothing more than a concept. An idea, abstract enough that she couldn’t comprehend it, distant enough that she didn’t have to think about it. She knows that once- ages ago, before this, before she became little more than a shadow- she could see it, that she loved it. That something about colour made her heart hurt (not that it could hurt anymore, it had long stopped beating). She understands that someone had given her life a meaning, had made things as innocuous as a smile and hair dye seem precious, but now her memories are fuzzy. They fade and take a piece of her with them.

_(She remembers hair so vibrant that it was like a beacon, left her in awe of the beauty. She remembers loving those colours, loving the person who wore them, loving them with a fierceness she can barely brush against now._

_And yet, when she searches her memories, all she sees is white)._

* * *

She used to believe that death would be different, had spent many days dreading it. She had expected there to be more purpose in it, more of a destination, a sense of finality when you open your eyes and find that the world has left you behind. She'd expected angels there to guide her, to condemn her, to end up in hell for eternal punishment, to meet those who'd died before her, and yet, all there was was an emptiness, a constant sense of loss, of decay, of not being real.

Death was fading, it was slowly losing every aspect of yourself as the world moves on without you. It was finding yourself standing in a crowd and having nobody realize you were there, people passing through you as though you were air, because to them, you stopped being real the day you drew your last breath. It was the feeling of floating, of having no reason to exist, no purpose to go anywhere.

To Allison, death is losing yourself and finding yourself set adrift, drowning amongst the constant drag of time. It is thinking of a woman- someone who you loved, that much is clear as day from the ache it brings up- and yet finding yourself drawing. It's the constant nagging feeling that you’re missing something, that when you look at an item, a face, a place and there’s the sting of recognition, the knowledge that you know it- that you should know- and yet you can’t remember. You try and you search and you scream but you can't remember and it hurts, it's painful, and you don't fucking know why. It’s the thought of a face that makes your heart ache but being unable to place it, to find your memories ending up lost in the blur of days into years, months into decades.

Death is empty and futile and somehow, that’s much worse than eternal torture could ever be.

_(She searches for a name and yet draws up blank)._

* * *

 When time leaves- hurrying away from her, fast and cruel as it always has been, always will be- it takes her memories with it. Every passing day causes her to remember less of who she was and how she lived until she can barely remember her own name. She has no purpose to her existence, no reason to do anything- she is simply a remnant of the past, a ghost- stranded amongst the lost and the fading. A dead woman who can't even die properly.

_(She sometimes gets a feeling that shes missing something, someone very precious and that she shouldn’t forget. But it’s always gone before she can question it and soon, she even the feeling disappears from her mind)._

Around her the city bustles, people passing in a rush of movement and life (because they still have a chance, they still have the freedom to breathe and live and nobody can stop them, not yet. Not ever) that is dazzling to witness on the rare good days, the days she doesn't feel like she's being hacked away at every passing second, that she's stranded and no-one will help her. On those days she can remain still for hours, just watching them move like they'll reveal the secrets of the universe to her. On the bad days, they make her anger rise and the urge to scream, to punch something, to do anything because they're alive and she is not and it is just. So. _Infuriating,_ having to have it rubbed into her face every fucking second, to witness what she will never have again, to know that once-sometime, probably, because _she can't even fucking remember properly_ \- she was like them. Alive. She hates those days, so of course they happen the most frequently. They never still, never stop- simply blur together in black and white and grey, faces lost with everything else because if there is one thing she's learned, it's that there is no such thing as permanence.  

_(Not even with love)._

And she watches, because there’s nothing else for her to do. She watches them live, grow and die, never being noticed, never being seen. She sometimes wonders how her life would change if they could see her- if she might experience excitement, if she could live again, but then she dismisses the idea.

_(What use would it be, when she'd only forget in the end?)_

* * *

There’s a funeral happening- which was not rare, people die all the time, but what was rare was that there was no ghosts. Usually, the dead person would hang around, staring mournfully at the proceedings and trying to gather their bearings because the thing about dying is that you don't actually realize your dead right away. The lack of one meant that this person was one of the rare few who was able to move straight on without lingering in the living world, which was fascinating to Allison and, on a whim, she decides to watch.

_(The sea of black. There was something therapeutic about knowing that the black you see was genuinely black, not that the world you see was a lie)._

As she draws closer, it becomes clear that the swarm of people are all old, shriveled and wilting as their bodies fail to hold them up, like gravity itself is trying to ruin them, and yet they all seem hard. Their eyes all hold a hardness beneath the grief, the sadness, the kind of look you get when you've witnessed hell, and for some reason it feels comforting. Familiar, even. The gathering is small- surprisingly so, normally these things are packed enough that she cant turn around without passing through someone (sometimes she'd punch them in the face and pretend they could feel it, but not today). For some reason, as Allison looks around, something inside her screams warnings about it. She feels strange, like there's something she’s missing, something she should know. Every face tugs at something inside her and she doesn’t know why.

_(Did she know them, before? But that’s not possible, she only died a year ago. It had only been one year and she had barely been 20, hadn't she? Or was it 30?_

_She couldn’t remember and that terrified her)._

She floats, disorientated for what could have been a moment or much longer, before she hears crying and suddenly they're all gathered in front of a coffin, huddling close as though in hope of a revival. She shakes herself, settling a little way above the group so she can watch as a woman- her curls filled with grey and dark skin wrinkled- places some flowers-

_(orchids, her mind supplies around the ringing in her ears, the petals a pale grey. Something about that makes Allison laugh and she doesn’t know why, she doesn’t like it **, she doesn’t remember).**_

-on the coffin, face wet with tears. Her gaze lingers on the photograph longingly for a moment longer before stepping away, the next person taking her place. This time it’s a man, short (like really short, what do they feed him) and sagging on his walking stick, a hard light in his hazel eyes. He doesn’t cry, doesn’t give a speech, doesn’t even give any flowers- but he does place a set of knives-

_(Knives, why knives? Why does her chest hurt all of a sudden, why does she feel like she shouldn’t be here what-)_

-down on the coffin with a care that seems out of place on him, saying simply:

“I’m returning them now.”

And then he steps away. After him comes a tall man with a tattoo on his face, a man who’s missing an arm and has a face like someone used him for target practice,  and on and on and on, each time adding an item to the pile. With every passing person Allison feels the ache in her head grow stronger and stronger until everything was a blur and she couldn’t focus, couldn’t think, didn’t know anything beyond _this is wrong I should be there this is w rong-_

_("Why am I here?")_

Shaking, trembling- whether from fear or overexertion she didn’t know, doesn't want to know- she approached the grave, kneeling down in front of the photograph with something inside her feeling heavy and unpleasant. It was a blur- blacks, whites and greys mixing together in a mess that let her know that it was probably very colourful- but she could make out the face of a woman, aged and tired, with a soft smile and gentle eyes, hair showing through with a mish-mash of shades that looked faded to Allison's eyes, like they were void of life.

_(She wondered what the colours looked like and it felt like her heart was screaming)._

She lifted her gaze to the grave, fingers reaching out to hover above the engraved letters (she didn’t touch it, couldn’t bring herself to- somehow, the thought of passing through it made her blood run cold), and read:

_“Renee Walker-Reynolds,_

_Loving wife and mother._

_Died 2063."_

The world shattered and dragged part of her with it.

_(Her eyes burned and she wondered, why she was crying? Why does it hurt?)_

* * *

Once and only once, Allison tried to pass on. She tried to figure out what was keeping her here- in this space between life and death, stuck without truly being in either- but she couldn’t make sense of it because there was nothing for her to draw from. She tried to ask other ghosts, people in similar situations to her who might know better, but they didn’t know any more than she did.

_(It didn’t help that they both forgot what they were talking about before they had a chance to ponder)._

She yearned for release from this prison, something in her crying out for what she’d lost (her life, her memories, herself) but she didn’t know how. She didn't even know if it was possible because it's not like there was somebody she could ask about it. And she hated it, the unfairness, the cruelty, the lack of control. She just wanted to move on (she felt that if she did then she could find something, something important to her and she could be whole again), but it wouldn’t fucking let her because when did anything go right?

She was trapped and it wouldn’t let her go until it had stolen everything from her.

_(They always said that life was unfair. She should have expected that death would be no different)._

* * *

She couldn’t even remember what colour was anymore, but when she thought of it her heart ached and she didn't know why.

_(What was this feeling again?)_

* * *

She didn’t know what she was and yet, she couldn’t bring herself to care. It didn't matter, nothing did.

_(She was fading away and nobody would know, not even herself)._

* * *

 . _..Who was she?_

* * *

_(After death, everything is painted to be dull and hollow, leaving no trace of the warmth you'd find with colour. And it takes away everything until, eventually, black and white is all you know._

_Because in death, there is no need to know you once lived)._

 

**Author's Note:**

> Can be found on my[ tumblr, polyhymina.](http://polyhymina.tumblr.com/writings)


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